A vehicle includes ornamentation attached to the exterior of the vehicle. For example, the ornamentation may include badges, e.g., identifying the make, model, manufacturer, etc., of the vehicle. Other examples of ornamentation include exterior molding, a grill, a spoiler, an aero shield, etc. Each ornamentation may be connected to an exterior panel of the vehicle. Adhesive may, in part, connect the ornamentation to the exterior panel. For example, the badge may be adhesively connected to a door panel, lift gate, deck lid, etc.
The adhesive connection between the ornamentation and the exterior panel is important to the performance and durability of the ornamentation. Specifically, a reliable adhesive connection ensures that the ornamentation remains attached to the panel during the lifetime of the vehicle. Both the panel and the ornamentation are rigid and, as such, the reliability of the connection is based on the fit of the ornamentation to the exterior panel, i.e., the closeness of the match in the shape of the ornamentation and the exterior panel. This fit affects the amount of contact, or lack thereof, of the adhesive with the ornamentation and the exterior panel and, thus, affects the reliability of the connection. The tolerances for successful adhesion are extremely tight making measurement reliability critical to successful ornamentation-to-panel adhesion performance.
From time to time, the design of any given vehicle model may be modified, e.g., to either freshen the design of the model or to completely redesign the model. When the design changes, the shape of the exterior panels of the vehicle may slightly change. Instead of completely redesigning the ornamentation, the cost of the design change of the vehicle may be reduced if the pre-existing ornamentation may be used with the new vehicle design and/or if the pre-existing ornamentation may be slightly modified for use with the new vehicle design.
Current techniques for analyzing the fit of the pre-existing ornamentation with the new design of the panels are unreliable, inaccurate, and time-consuming. For example, one technique includes taking sections normal to the boundary of the ornamentation in computer aided design (CAD) data of the ornamentation. This technique is not a comprehensive surface check, but instead, is limited to the points taken along the sections, thus reducing the accuracy.
Another method includes generating tessellated data representing the CAD data. In other words, a cloud point representation of the CAD data is generated. This tessellated data is used to visually depict the fit of the pre-existing ornamentation with the new design of the panel. This visual depiction may then be used to manually change the CAD data based merely on the visualization, i.e., the location of adjustments to the CAD data is made by estimation based on the visual depiction of the fit. In addition, this current technique provides false-positives data outputs resulting in inaccurate measurements, especially when such tight tolerances are required. Further, this current technique involves very large files, which may cause CAD software lock-up.
As such, an opportunity exists to establish an accurate and easy method for producing vehicle ornamentation that properly fits to exterior panels of the vehicle.